Gay Role Models

I met some of The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence tonight.  First off... a word about how amazing these people are. They are drag nuns who do community service. I can't even believe that this is a thing.  But I love love love it.

I asked one of the sisters, "What do you wish someone told you when you were a young gay kid?" 

The answer was interesting. I had hoped for some sage words of wisdom and encouragement I could pass on to my kid, but instead I got a bittersweet piece of retrospective.

He (she? I am unclear on how to use pronouns for male cisgender drag people) said that he just wished he had role models. Adults who were where they are and know what they are going through and can give an image of hope for a positive life and future.

Why is this bittersweet?  Okay, well, it didn't answer my question. But I love that my son does have gay role models in his life. Several of them, but most specifically a guy at church who volunteers teaching Sunday school and children's ministry. Rhett is a great guy who is young and fun and openly gay.  Being gay is just a small percentage of who Rhett is in my son's eyes. In my son's eyes, Rhett tells better jokes than anyone he knows.  Rhett throws himself completely into every game they play, even if it means eating 17 jalapenos, which somehow equals "hero" in the eyes of a little boy who cringes when pasta sauce is too spicy. Rhett sings well. Rhett is a good actor in the skits that they sometimes do in church.   But my son also knows that this great Christian adult happens to be gay. He has met Rhett's boyfriend. And my son sees that his straight daddy is also best friends with Rhett, and that gives my son a lot of hope too.  That he won't lose all his straight friends when he comes out to them. And that he will not have to choose between love and church. Because the two should never be mutually exclusive.

My son also does theatre. I hate to promote stereotypes, but some are true, and the gay male theatre stereotype is true. We have met many straight males. But it seems like over half of the men running theatre programs in our area are gay. And that's fantastic.  My son sees gay couples at cast parties. And he sees Human Rights Campaign Equality stickers on practically every car in the parking lot. He knows his directors and choreographers and producers are gay. But mostly he just loves them because they are great artists. And my son wants to be an artist when he grows up. Not just a gay man. 

But I know that we are so, so lucky. In a fairly large suburb (over 100,000 people) with something like 30 churches, we are one of only two churches I know of in town that truly welcomes full participation of gay members. That means that all the other little kids growing up in the other churches in my city do not have these role models. And I am certain that some of those kids are gay.

And the school district where we live is really conservative too. When you search for "gay straight alliance" on the schools websites, it seems like none of them have them. I have never seen a local GSA represented at any local PRIDE thing or gay community events, so I am pretty sure they don't exist.  If there are gay teachers in the schools, no one knows about it. Heck, there are rarely male teachers in the schools. They are all older white females.
 
Little kids need gay role models.  I hope that young gay men understand the importance of being involved in the community, and I hope that community organizations, YMCAs and Boys and Girls Clubs and churches and schools, understand the importance of supporting openly gay individuals. Because little kids NEED role models that remind them of themselves. They need people to show them that, even if they don't have classic cisgender heterosexual visions of a happy future, that it's okay. That happy and gay can be synonyms. They certainly aren't antonyms.